Other people's customs

I don't buy customs all that often these days, but coincidentally I scored some recently from two different independent card makers and they both arrived on the same day. One is a set of cards-that-should-have-been '80s Career Cappers by Gio at When Topps Had Balls. The other group of cards are artistic interpretations of cards-that-actually-were (and some that-never-were) by Mark at IDrawBaseballCards.

I love both and figured I'd mix them together in a post.

Kicking off with a terrific pair of 1983 Topps homages.

I won't show all the backs, but I'll give you an idea with these two. In a perfect world I'd love to see full stats on these final tributes, but I know from experience that's a pain to get all lined up. The career highlights are nice, though, and look good in the original design colors. The art cards keep it simple, as you'd expect, but provide the important info.

Rookie mania!

Here are a couple active guys in Acuña and Mookie. The sketch one is a bonus thank-you from Mark. The rest I picked out from his shop from the $1 singles, and a promo code he shared took care of the shipping. Pretty good deal. They're on nice cardstock and everything.

1980 Topps mix.

A trio of 1981 Topps should-have-beens. Yeah, would have been cool of Topps to give a tribute card to Sadaharu Oh, why not?

Hall of Famers who wrapped up their careers in 1983 and could've/should've gotten base card sendoffs in 1984 Topps that might've looked something like this.

Dipping back into the 70s to pair up Pirates and Orioles with 1985 Topps.

1987 Topps representing.

Reggie Jackson and a couple other guys who last took the field during the 1987 season and therefore would have been nice to get a final card of in 1988 Topps.

Finally, we close out with these beauties in the 1989 Topps design, including a fun McGruff/McGriff combo.

So there you have a few neat custom cards I added to my collection the other day. Mad props to Gio and Mark for their fine work.
Thanks for stopping by.

more silhouette custom/cardart

My latest cardart projects still involve finding silhouette ideas to put together. Lately I've done a few more glow-in-the-dark 4-card displays.

Here's one for Derek Jeter:

And I thought it'd be fun to do a series of Carlton Fisk hopping around:

More Rickey Henderson, too:

And Barry Bonds breaking Hank Aaron's record:

Finally, here's another Rickey.. getting a little weird with my first attempt at spin art splattering:

And there's what I've been working on lately. If anything caught your eye, I'm always down to talk trade or check out my eBay listings.

Oh, thanks for the well-wishes in the comments of my previous post, by the way! I'm doing much better now, with my smell/taste thankfully returned.

new cardart: Silhouette Cards

I haven't really shared any new art projects of mine so far this year, but I've been tinkering on a project for the past few months. All the Christmas tree ornaments that I made back in November '24 kinda burned me out on that style of cardmaking (cutting up real cards and adding shiny backgrounds, etc.) and so starting in mid December, I began working on a new concept: silhouette cards!

Rickey Henderson was my muse the first subject chosen. When he suddenly passed away shortly after I began working on the concept, it became a more somber tribute to him. I made a lot of "prototypes" as I figured out the best way to go about things through trial and error, so it was nice to at the same time be celebrating the memory of a legend. And while I've got other Rickey silhouettes in the works (running, etc), for this initial batch, I stuck with his rookie card stance, in a Warhol-inspired repetition of variations.

In addition to singles, I've wanted to put together displays, further leaning into the Warhol aesthetic with the color quadrants. I customized a BCW 4-card magnetic holder with "The GOAT" banner in the middle.

I've also got Bo Jackson in this "GOAT" series, putting a vertical twist on his iconic '90 Score FB/BB card.

This "Black Metallic" themed display is available in both standard (sharp corners) and rounded corners:

Also a "Black Gold" variation display..

I really want to improve at making videos, because this stuff generally looks better in-hand with the light jumping around.

And you readers know I'm nuts for glow-in-the-dark stuff, so the glowing versions are probably my favorite. I sampled several types of glowing material searching for the best and brightest.

The trio of this first batch of silhouette "GOAT" cards is rounded out by a renowned basketball guy.

Riffing on the iconic Michael Jordan card in 1986-87 Fleer basketball.

So there you have it, an overview of the latest creative endeavor in the Baseball Card Breakdown catalog. All these cards and more have been made available for sale on eBay now. (I might soon try putting stuff on Etsy too, and of course I'm always down to trade.) I'll be interested to see what styles sell and what don't. Then I'll likely work up a second batch once I get a feel for what people like (ie, more variations of the styles that sell well), along with other ideas I've got kick. Even if this stuff does sell well, it'll be a while till I recoup the investment on my manufacturing costs. But if people dig them and I can achieve my dream of being able to make a thing and then easily sell the thing, that'd be awesome. I don't do it for the money, I do it because I like creating neat stuff (and generating walks to the post office with my dog), but sure, it'd be nice to eventually turn a profit and be able to consider myself a "working artist" with this crafty side-hobby of mine.

If you're interested, here's the link to my eBay listings. 

Thanks!

My latest customs

The new printer has been working out pretty well other than sometimes having trouble getting on the Wi-Fi without turning it off-and-then-on-again. I owed return card packages to blogging buds Johnny and Bob, and I don't have much in the way of real cards available that they'd want, so my first priority with the new printer was to finish some customs to send their way (again).

Back in 2022, I made a 9-card custom set called Bubble Gum Baseball featuring bubble-blowing photos of ballplayers. I had whipped up a "2nd series" with a new design in the middle of 2024, but my home printer at the time wouldn't cooperate, so here in 2025 I got to do the thing like real card manufacturers and not actually put out a product until the next year, kinda like how Topps (Fanatics) typically puts out those Chrome Anniversary sets a year late.

But yeah, here's a second page of bubble customs:

I retained the Bubble Gum Baseball logo and '73 Topps position silhouette from the 1st series for continuity. However, I decided to go all-horizontal and full-bleed this time. I admit the gumball design is not my best work, but it's fine. When it comes time to make a 3rd group of these, I'll most likely go back to a vertical design with borders.

 

The backs each feature a write-up paragraph, typically with added context for the front photograph (e.g. that was Joey Votto's final game in Cincinnati). Tiny text, but zoom in if you like.

 

 

 
The print run on this set is currently just 3: Bob, John, and one for me. But I could print more if anybody wants to make a trade offer involving any.

But wait, there's more!

I also made some All-Time Braves customs for Johnny in the style of cards put out by TCMA in 1986. I tried to think of notable Braves who don't have (m)any Braves cards out there. I love stuff like "short term stops" and other familiar person in unfamiliar uniform pictures.

I remember as a new collector getting a card or two in this design from a Sears catalog "collector kit" repack, circa Christmas 1990, so I've got a soft spot for it. Chances are I do more of these, and for more teams, because they're fun for me to whip up.

The backs mimic the real TCMA cards and similar to the bubble customs feature a write-up with more context.

 

 

I made a couple extras of each of the above All Time customs for trade bait and trade package thrown-ins, so if you'd like any, just let me know. Shameless link to my wantlist.

 

 

And one last new custom to show off today, but this one is really just for me. Two of my "under the radar" PC guys happen to be in camp with the Padres this spring as non-roster invitees fighting for a bench spot. I've got my fingers crossed that at least one of them makes the club.. hopefully both! But regardless how it shakes out, I at least wanted to get the moment documented in my card collection.

 

Trenton Brooks is a guy who went to the same high school as me, and Gavin Sheets shares my first name. I've been following/collecting both dudes for years, so it's cool to have them suiting up for my favorite team this spring. For the custom, I modified a 1986 Fleer rookie prospects template I had from years back. I plan to print out a copy for each PC.

 

 

Trenton would be just the third Guy From Granite to play for his hometown Padres, with the Giles brothers being the other two. And Mr. Sheets would be the first guy named Gavin to play for San Diego. Good luck, fellas!

Thanks for reading and I'll see you next post.

Steven Universe box finally busted

Back around 2017, some of my co-workers were really into a Cartoon Network show called Steven Universe. Ben, a guy I'd affectionately describe as a "cool nerd", would talk about what happened on the most recent episode, and it was such mind-bending craziness that it was hard for me to wrap my head around the words coming out of his mouth. 

 

But yeah, they all seemed to love it, and I eventually checked it out and got into it too. It's a weird kids' show at its core-- some good conflict/action parts and silly/cute parts-- entertaining for all ages and with a lot of positive messages regarding gender and race not hidden too deep below the surface. Not sure I should even bother trying to give a synopsis, but basically the characters are sorta like superhero aliens who can combine with each other into other characters (called "fusions") and have adventures while living in a quaint beach town that frequently attracts space monsters that need to be dealt with. There's a big wikipedia entry if you're curious to learn more. It's currently streaming on HBO Max (and Hulu?), I believe.

Back in summer of 2020, inspired by a baseball-themed episode I had just watched, I whipped up a few Steven Universe customs in Photoshop. After teasing them in a tweet, Shawn (aka Corky on the cardsphere) let me know the show had real cards released in 2019. Not long after, I pulled the trigger on a box from Dave & Adams via eBay for $60. Summer '00 was a crazy time and so when the box arrived, I set it aside for a rainy day.. and eventually decided to wait until I finished watching through the show to bust it. (I even started drafting this here post back in 2020 where it sat basically blank until now.)

And hey, guess what, I finally finished watching the show just this month! Well, there's the main show (5 seasons), then a movie, then a final/epilogue season (under the name "Steven Universe Future") to kinda wrap things up. Full disclosure, I'm still watching through the Future show, but the cards only cover seasons 1-5, so I didn't see the point of holding off the box break any longer.

This box was the only "unopened product" I've been sitting on for the past few years (ie, the covid-induced hobby bubble era), pre-dating my big move to the new house 2.5 years ago. (That's the big milestone for me keeping track of my recent past: life back at the old house vs. new house.) Kinda sad to open it... especially seeing that the cheapest box on eBay now has an asking price of $375. lol. I should have stocked up back when they were $59.95!

But no, if I buy a box to bust, I will bust that box, my friend. #collect

Cryptozoic did a great job with collation. I got a full complete base set (featuring a gold foil star in the corner), a few base parallels (pink foil star), and 3 complete insert sets. I actually ripped several packs while watching the Steven Universe Movie, and it was serendipitous for me to be able to look at the cards to help figure out what's going on (I was wondering about a fusion on screen, and bam, I pulled the card that explained on the back how that particular fusion was made).

The die-cut vinyl record theme cards don't have parallels, but the other 2 insert sets also do the pink foil parallels gimmick ("pink deco"), netting me one each.

I wasn't aware of the whole pink deco parallel thing at first, and when I first pulled the Rose Quartz, I was like "oh, that was cool of them to do Rose's card in pink," but no, that was just a coincidental lucky pull, evidenced by the base gold pulled later.

My sketchcard was a solid one. Looks to be pen & colored pencils with a fair amount of work put into it. Taking a quick look at the 200+ sketch cards from this set on eBay, I'd say this is among the more desirable. And check it out, this character is named Ruby. Ruby isn't exactly a main character, but is one of two gems who combine into Garnet (who is a main character.. yeah, it's confusing if you don't know the show. [There are actually several different Rubies in the show, adding to the confusion.]).

My dog is named Ruby, so the sketch is right up my alley, but it's a coincidence-- Steven Universe didn't contribute to her naming, at least not consciously. But funny enough, another former co-worker of mine (who joined later but had independently been a fan of the show already) has a cat named Peridot after a character on the show.

Irma "Aimo" Ahmed seems to be a popular, respected sketch card artist, with lots of cards featured in products for Star Wars, Marvel, and DC. So yeah, nice pull there.

Sketch cards and autographs are seeded about 1 per box, but not guaranteed. As I picked up the final pack having not yet pulled an auto, I was feeling bummed about my box lacking any ink. But thankfully the last pack delivered the goods.

The Rutile Twins aren't main characters either-- I'm only vaguely familiar with them-- but hey, still a nice card. Gotta love a heart doodle. Ashly Burch has done a lot of cool stuff in her career, mostly video game voice acting, such as The Last of Us Part II and the Borderlands series.

Wikipedia tells me the Rutile Twins-- a Gem with two conjoined bodies from the waist up-- are a part of a group called the Off-Colors consisting of "fugitive Gems from Homeworld, first appearing in season 5, who lived in hiding underground because they are regarded as defective or do not conform to Homeworld's expectations."

A crazy thing is I couldn't find any copies of this card on eBay while taking a curious look at market value. Not in completed listings either. Despite being numbered to 225, it's evidently a tough pull. Compare it to the similar auto in the set of Kate Flannery (who was Meredith on The Office, so not exactly a nobody), also numbered /225, and that card has several examples available to buy online. Weird.

There are a bunch of autos from the set that I'd love to add to my collection-- keep in mind I have completed the autograph set from the only other Cryptozoic product I ever busted (Ghostbusters)--, but other than that Kate Flannery, they don't seem to be very plentiful/affordable, so I probably won't hit that mission too hard, but may keep an eye out for cheap outliers that might pop up.

There's one specific voice actor of a recurring character that sadly doesn't have an autograph in the set which would otherwise be a no-brainer for my collection. Joel Hodgson, best known for Mystery Science Theater 3000, plays Bill Dewey, Beach City's mayor for most of the show's run. Guess what, I made a custom for the card-that-should-have-been.

I purposefully made the signature look "off" in case anyone missed the "Inauthentic" edit. Not trying to trick anyone, just making a fun card. I grabbed the signature image off the internet.. off one of my own old blog posts actually-- it's from a signed DVD from Joel to me personally (I didn't meet him, but had an acquaintance facilitate). So that's a little easter egg for me. (Speaking of dusty drafts I'm [still] working on, chances are I finally finish my big MST3K post sometime this year too, by the way, where I'll show off all my [real] MST autos and stuff.)

Now here are the customs that I originally designed in 2020, but only finished and printed the other day.

It's a simple original design using screenshots from that one baseball-themed episode. Welp, technically Garnet didn't actually play in the game but rather it was her component characters Ruby and Sapphire (note Ruby behind the dish), so I fudged it to get her a standard card. Backs are kept simple but with an additional screenshot. I'm happy with how these turned out and think they complement the Cryptozoic cards nicely.. would have made a fun insert set! (FYI to anyone at Cryptozoic, Fanatics, or whoever.. I'm freshly on the job market and would love to find a creative role of employment in the hobby. Hit me up!)

As with all my customs, they're not for sale, but feel free to talk me into a trade if you want.

That about wraps up the post. Any of you readers into Steven Universe? I'm considering doing a rewatch after I finish it up since I feel like I didn't really "get" the show sufficiently till the latter seasons. Now that I know what's going on better, I think I'd pick up on more stuff happening in the earlier seasons. But yeah, fun show.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend, everyone!

A couple quick bites of Kellogg's customs

End of an era! The home printer I've used for pretty much every custom card I've ever printed out recently died. I had been planning on getting a new printer later this year anyways, so I wasn't too upset by the situation. That old Canon served me well, but had been more and more streaky over the years.

Anyways, here are the final customs printed out on its last gasps.

Posting this now specifically because Hoyt Wilhelm was born 100 years ago today, and I wanted to do my little part to celebrate. Hoyt! Hoyt! Hoyt! The design is 1972 Kellogg's. There aren't a lot of Dodgers photos of Wilhelm available, so I colorized a b&w one in an attempt at freshness. It printed out a little weird-- trying to print a third copy of this was the printer's death blow--  so I'll likely try again once I've got the new printer up and running and hope for improved results. But still happy with this oddball-adjacent entry to my Hoyt PC.

A couple weeks before the Hoyt, I made this 1973 Kellogg's Dave Winfield. Like with the Hoyt, these are "cards that could have been", technically, both having played during those seasons. Not too far fetched that Kellogg's might've beat Topps to the punch by including Winfield in their '73 set, though his debut was June 19, 1973. But like if they came out with a little Kellogg's Update set later that year, this card would have been a great fit. LOL.

Both the card backs were more time-consuming than ideal-- Hoyt with all those stats, Dave with the big write-up-- but I have a hard time leaving my custom backs too "unfinished" or they bug me.

Thanks again to my old Canon printer for the years of service, the frustrating son of a bitch that it was. I'm staying away from Canon for a while, giving HP a shot now. Hopefully it works out well and I come up with plenty more customs to show off on the blog and share with my trader buddies for years to come.

Bubble Gum Baseball (9-card custom set)

Once I finally got back into the groove of making customs earlier this year, my first order of business was to make a few cards with bubble-blowing photos for Bob at Best Bubble, whom I needed to thank for some cards he sent me spread over the prior several months.

Usually when I make customs, I'm borrowing a known design, like a classic Topps design or something oddball from the junk era. But I decided to try coming up with a "new" design for this project. That's not my strong suit, but I think the cards came out pretty decent. I like going with 9 cards total for convenient paging.

This is a fun group of cards, yeah?

My "new design" ended up looking like more of a mashup, but with the thousands of sets out there at this point, it's not easy to come up with something fresh. Can you identify some familiar aspects? Here's a closer look:

The name plate area is an allusion to the packaging of Big League Chew, while at the same time paying homage to my personal favorite Topps flagship set, 1973. I decided to use the color dot to roughly match team color rather than keep it assigned by position, mainly because I knew I'd end up with several outfielders and I wanted more variety than a bunch of green dots.

The Bubble Gum Baseball logo is a little busy, but it provides all the backstory you need to understand what the set is all about. (I tried seeing how it looked without it, but it made things look a little too straight "1973 Topps" [instead of the subtle "1973 Topps" look I was going for].)

I'm not taking these to a professional printshop or anything, just using photo paper on my streaky old Canon home printer, so they're not perfect-- the digital files look better than the printed versions-- but good enough.

The backs have a little write-up captioning the front picture, often revealing added significance to them, such as the fact that the Trout photo was taken during warm-ups before his very first game in the bigs.

The first 6 of these were made a month or two ago, and then more recently I finished out the page with the bottom 3. My plan is to stop here, at least for this year, but may whip up a "Series 2" next year if there's interest. I would likely tweak the design a bit for future editions, but keeping a similar look.

Want any of these in your own collection? I don't sell customs, but can usually be talked into trading. My top priority at the moment is 1972 Topps baseball. If you've got any 1972 Topps on my wantlist available-- especially high numbers-- I'd be interested in working out a trade with you. I'm still aiming to finish 1972 by the end of the year-- you know, to commemorate its anniversary or whatever-- preferably through trading more than purchasing, and you can expect to see more "trade bait" on the blog fishing for '72s coming up this year. So when you guys go to card shows or whatever, keep an eye out for good deals on '72 high numbers to get and then trade to me! lol

Oh, and there's a special parallel. Get ready for this.

I haven't actually finished creating them yet, but each card theoretically may have a pink parallel. But the color of the border isn't the main draw with these parallels. I think I'm still in the "prototype" stage with these, but if Blogger with cooperate and let me share a video, it'll give you an idea of what I'm going for...

There's a "real bubble"! Let's see Topps or Panini do that! I gotta say, the bubble is fun to play with.. just squeezing it a little and knocking it around for a moment is very satisfying. It'll most likely deflate over time, but my earliest tests from over a couple months ago are still looking just as good, so hopefully plenty of time goes by before the bubble goes flat. I toyed with shoving in a cotton ball to help it keep its integrity long term, but that makes it clumpy and less fun. So I guess I'll just consider them "living" cards that may change over time as the bubble slowly deflates.

These pink parallel bubble cards are a pain to make, so forgive me for being stingy with trading them, but you could pry one away from me if you happen to have '72 Topps superstars I need. (I'd specifically love to score any of these big needs: 49 Willie Mays, 299 Hank Aaron, 300 Hank Aaron IA, 309 Roberto Clemente, 310 Roberto Clemente IA, 550 Brooks Robinson, 559 Pete Rose, 595 Nolan Ryan, 600 Al Kaline, 620 Phil Niekro, 686 Steve Garvey, 695 Rod Carew, 696 Rod Carew IA, 751 Steve Carlton TR, 752 Joe Morgan TR, 754 Frank Robinson TR, 761 Ben Oglivie/Ron Cey RC, 777 Hoyt Wilhelm.)

As for the base cards, I've got 3 complete sets ready to go and could crank out singles for team/player collectors if there's interest. Just check out my wantlist and feel free to get in touch with any trade offers.

Thanks!